


Leverage, Season 1, Episode 7, The Wedding Job

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Leverage
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s01e07 The Wedding Job, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 01, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24325114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Leverage, Season 1, Episode 7, The Wedding Job

Open to an Italian restaurant. It’s closed saved for the mobsters doing business, and the owner’s wife would much rather said mobsters pull a Team Leverage and do their business standing dramatically in a parking lot than in the restaurant.

Fair enough, but I still say Team Leverage could have just sat in the car or, at least, found a bench.

The owner convinces his wife to go home, and the mobsters drink from tiny tea cups. Then, one of the mobsters shoots the other, and he makes it clear the owner will be taking the fall for this.

What I don’t understand is the police’s response time here. After about two seconds of the guy being shot, there’s tons of sirens outside. Is there a police station right next to the restaurant that I missed? Even if someone near the restaurant called the police, I still don’t think they’d be able to get here so fast.

It turns out this was five years ago, and the owner’s wife is now talking to Sophie, Hardison, and Eliot. The owner still has ten more years to his sentence.

Nate comes into headquarters, and seeing the meeting, he fusses to Hardison about how he thought _he_ picked the clients, and then, he disdainfully asks, “So, who is that _crying_?”

Since Nate is usually much less of a jerk about clients crying, I’m going to assume this is still him being prickly about the fact this client isn’t one he hand-picked.

Hardison exposits, and Nate goes in to talk to the owner’s wife. She wanted her husband to tell the truth so that they could get into witness protection, but he believed the mob would take care of his family. The mob has not. The restaurant is gone, the house she and her husband had is gone, and she and her little girl are suffering financially.

When she found out about the lavish wedding the mobster is providing for his own daughter, she got even more angry and heartbroken. Nate tries to suggest there are other agencies who could prove her husband’s innocence, but she’s already tried them, and they refused due to the mob’s involvement. What she wants is her husband’s restaurant back.

Nate says they’ll discuss it and get back to her, and she takes that to mean the answer’s no.

It’s revealed Parker has been teaching the little girl how to lockpick. Adorable.

After the mother and daughter leave, the whole team informs Nate, like it or not, this is now a Team Leverage case.

And so, they all go look at the mobster’s house from a distance. Hardison points out the FBI presence, and cut to him and Parker in person in black suits just casually knocking on the FBI’s vans door. ‘Hey, we’re FBI, too,’ he says with a flash of badges, and because he and the older agent, Taggert, bond over some memo and the younger agent, McSweeten, is automatically attracted to pretty, similarly-aged Parker, this is immediately accepted.

I like McSweeten and Taggert, and I’m really impressed with the work Gerald Downey did in The D.B. Cooper Job, but this really strains credibility.

Granted, I’m less critical of Sam and Dean’s method, but Supernatural is an explicitly fantastical show.

Inside the van, Taggert and Hardison have a mostly normal conversation where Hardison offers to help improve the transmission of the bug planted, and Parker has an awkward one with McSweeten where at one point, she essentially feels him up in order to steal a badge from him.

Over on the hill, Eliot does tech stuff on a laptop, and Hardison and Parker leave the bumbling agents.

Next, Eliot is in an FBI place, and Hardison guides him via earbud. There’s an interesting thing where Eliot isn’t wearing glasses, goes into a dark room, and when he turns the lights on, he is. He wants to make sure there will be no typing involved, and Hardison assures him all he has to do is plug a flashdrive in. During this, it’s revealed Hardison has taught Eliot how to use Photoshop. Awesome.

It turns out, though, the plugging a flashdrive in won’t work. See, the tapes they want are actual cassette tapes.

Hardison sets off the fire alarm so that Eliot can walk out with the box of tapes unnoticed.

Later, in headquarters, Team Leverage discusses what Hardison has learned from listening to the tapes. The mobster’s money is in his wife’s offshore account, and he has liquid assets in his house.

They decide they’ll go in as wedding staff.

Couldn’t Parker please do something else?

In the mobster house, the bride-to-be isn’t for her mother’s overbearing wedding planning. Sophie shows up at the door claiming to be hired by the mobster to help the wife organise the perfect wedding for her daughter.

Eliot’s a chef, Nate is a priest, Parker’s a seamstress, and Hardison’s a DJ.

Once inside, Nate privately asks Sophie where they’re at, and I’m not sure I buy Sophie automatically jumping to assuming he’s asking about their tension-filled dance with one another, but she does. He clarifies: Where are they at with finding the money?

Meanwhile, Eliot is into his role as chef to the point he hasn’t started searching yet. He fusses he has 200 people to feed, okay! Then, he’s amused Nate assumed he was only good for busting heads.

I’ve read Kane loves to cook, and I don’t know if this aspect of Eliot’s characterisation was planned before he was cast or after, but either way, I imagine his love of cooking definitely helps make it work so well.

The mobster’s wife comes in, and she insults Eliot’s choice of hors d'oeuvres. He’s part devastated and part wondering if there’s any way he could justify killing her.

I’m wondering why she didn’t give him a menu of what she wanted ahead of time.

In the van, McSweeten and Taggert wish they had bugs planted all over the house.

Cue Hardison doing just this.

Now comes the scene I hate. I know Parker has issues with socialising, and usually, the show does a good job of making this funny without making fun of her. Usually, though, the show also doesn’t have people genuinely hurt by her awkwardness.

Here, an insecure maid of honour worries she’s fat. The actress is a slim woman. Parker calls her fat.

Why?

I’m not looking up Beth Riesgraf’s weight or trying to find out who this other actress is or what her weight is/was at the time of the filming, but what would make this slim actress’ character register as fat to Parker? The two look to be about the same size to me, but I admit I have trouble judging such things.

If the actress did have a heavier build, it would still be cruel of Parker to jab at her like this, but at least, it would make some sort of sense.

I wish the world was such where calling a fat person fat was simply a descriptor rather than a potentially devastating insult, but this world and Leverage’s universe aren’t like that. I don’t find it funny or cute when a pretty, slim, blonde woman cruelly makes an insecure woman feel even worse about her appearance, and it sure as hell doesn’t make me feel any sympathy for the pretty, slim, blonde woman.

And now, I’m moving on.

Meanwhile, Nate has a drink with mobster and bride’s fiancé, and after the latter leaves, the mobster reveals he tried to pay his daughter’s fiancé to leave, but the fiancé refused.

Apparently, though, he didn’t tell his bride-to-be that her father did this.

The mobster declares he’s yet to meet a man without a price, and Nate admits, “You and I have more in common than you think.”

Another mobster comes in, and he clearly has some reverence for Nate’s position as a holy man. The mobster has a call, and Nate’s carefully shooed away.

Back in Leverage headquarters, Team Leverage has ordered pizza, and they listen to what the bugs have picked up.

An interesting thing about Parker’s character is she’s frequently shown eating not-so-healthy foods. She must have a good metabolism, and the fact she’s often performing gymnastics likely helps this good metabolism keep her slim. Note: A person can be bigger and still be good at athletics.

Does she erroneously judge all bigger people as a combination of being lazy and having a diet similar to hers?

The tapes make it clear a deal is going down at the wedding, and they talk about how to steal money during the wedding they’re helping run.

Then, Nate, the only one besides possibly Sophie who’s been married, goes on an anti-marriage/wedding rant. I actually pretty much agree with him, but I’m curious if he secretly had these feelings when he was married/during his own wedding. Or did they develop after his divorce?

Afterwards, Eliot and Hardison talk, and Hardison can’t ever imagine getting married.

Yeah, you might not ever legally get married, but just so you know, Hardison, you’re talking to your future husband right now, and your future wife is likely still in the building.

Also, Hardison has a rainbow on his shirt, and I don’t know if the poly trio was planned at this point or not, but if so, awesome job, wardrobe.

Hardison asks if Eliot ever came close to getting married, and seeing through Eliot’s lie of answering in the negative, he asks, “What was her name?” Aw.

Chuckling half in amazement at the fact this guy he hasn’t known for long is seeing him so clearly and half in disbelieved uneasiness at the same, Eliot opens up some: There was a girl he grew up with, but she married someone else.

Hardison asks what Eliot did, and Eliot grumpily responds he liberated Croatia.

Okay, and I’m curious: Do the Croatian people have cause to be grateful, or did he ‘liberate’ them the same way certain superpower countries have gone into oil-rich countries and frelled things up?

At the wedding, Hardison helps Parker zip her bridesmaid dress. She’s unrepentant about making the maid of honour cry, but her future mother told her to make things right, and so, she’s trying to do so. Hardison thinks Parker looks much better in the dress, of course, he does, and pinning a fake flower on it, they share a nice moment.

Meanwhile, the mobster’s wife is screaming into her phone, and rudely dismissing Nate when he comes in, he hears her say something is in the screening room.

Later, outside, she and another man are physically affectionate in a way that doesn’t raise my eyebrows but does raise Nate’s. He orders Team Leverage to abandon posts to meet him.

However, Sophie comes across the crying bride-to-be. Unlike her parents, she seems like a genuinely nice person, and all she wanted was a small wedding. She just wants to marry the man she loves with little fuss and make a family with him.

Sophie goes on a rant about how men are uncommunicative and women shouldn’t put their faith in them.

Really, Sophie? You’re going to let your tension-filled dance with Nate get in the way of the con? Really?

Outside, the poly trio meet, and Eliot is upset about being taken away from his cooking. They tell him The Butcher is here, and, “Does he have the baby lambs?” Heh.

Think mob butcher, not food butcher, is the answer. Even more than that: Eliot has a rough history with said Butcher.

Then, it’s revealed that, well, the FBI is incompetent. They got a guest list for the wedding, and it turns out to be full of Millers and other non-suspicious sounding people.

Nate decides to pull the plug, but Sophie’s staying, and so, they’re all staying.

I really hope Nate is ordained to perform weddings, because, next up, he’s performing it. And he’s not toning down his issues with the subject and his tension-filled dance with Sophie whilst doing so. Oy vey.

In the kitchen, Parker and Eliot spat when he makes it clear she’ll have to check out the screening room as he’s doing something with peaches.

Parker breaks into the room, and finally, Nate turns the wedding around and makes Sophie happy in the process.

Then, Parker gets stuck hiding in the room with the mobster and the man the wife was physically affectionate with.

Only, the mobster’s money he promised the other guy was stolen.

Parker manages to quietly alert the others, and Nate realises it’s the mobster’s wife. Sophie goes to steal her phone.

Back in the screening room, it turns out this other man is the brother of the man the mobster shot.

Eliot heads to the screening room, but he comes across the Butcher.

Outside, Nate and Sophie talk about the mobster’s wife setting up her husband before realising she’s missing.

Eliot has to fight off the Butcher and his goons.

In the screening room, Parker makes the two men think she drunkenly came through the window in order to meet Hardison for a hookup, and also, everyone’s been looking for the father of the bride. Grabbing their hands, she drags them out.

The fight’s still going on.

Outside, the maid of honour is giving a nice toast to the newlyweds, but Hardison comes over to take the mic.

Interestingly enough, I think this happened about a year before the Taylor Swift-Kanye West incident.

However, it goes a lot better than that did. “Let’s give it up for the maid of honour. You are working the hell out of that dress!” Aw.

Then, he announces it’s time for the father-daughter dance, and oh, look, there’s the father-of-the-bride right over there about to get in the car with the other man.

The father-daughter dance begins, and Eliot is still fighting. There’s a moment where he gets a rolling pin, but then, decides to go for an appetizer instead.

Nate comes in. “You just kill a guy with an appetizer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” a panting Eliot answers as he wishes he could just have something along the lines of a nice little brewpub he could cook for and occasionally stop from being rob once a year.

Outside, Parker tells Hardison about her pretending to drunkenly be looking for him in order to have sex.

Inside, having gotten the money, Nate tells Eliot to put it in a certain car’s trunk before telling Hardison to get the bride and groom headed off for their honeymoon now.

Hardison does, and Nate goes over to the other man. In the other man’s language, he declares, “You’re a dead man.”

The other man leaves, and nearby, the one who showed reverence towards Nate’s position now suspiciously inquires, “Exactly what denomination are you, reverend?”

Meanwhile, Sophie tries but fails at physically stopping the mobster’s wife from leaving, and Nate informs the mobster about his wife leaving. The mobster goes to make a phone call, and they discover the passwords to the mobster’s wife’s bank accounts due to the mobster trying to change them.

Nate reveals he had Eliot deposit the stolen physical cash into the newlywed couple's car trunk.

They all leave the kitchen, and Hardison makes Eliot’s day by appreciatively munching on an hors d'oeuvre.

Before they head away, Nate taunts the mobster, but the mobster won’t realise it until later.

Team Leverage surprises the client with her husband’s restaurant back along with something extra: They helped the FBI get a recording of the mobster confessing to killing the other man’s brother, and so, her husband should be home soon.

Also, Eliot has made a celebratory dinner for everyone, and the little girl cutely sits in Parker’s lap.

Fin.


End file.
